


box step

by FoxGlade



Category: Dragon Booster
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9658712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: The story of how Parmon Sean meets Artha Penn for the second time, makes his first friend, and moves into Penn Stables, all within one fortnight.





	

**Author's Note:**

> quick notes because it's after midnight:
> 
> 1\. this is set immediately after the first section of One Step Two Step, and may make no sense unless you've read that // blanket disclaimer for any continuity errors that may occur as i continue to update this series + simultaneously update my own personal headcanons for stuff
> 
> 2\. slight warning for what may be perceived as child neglect? in canon we see a lot of parents who give their kids more independence than is probably wise, and we just straight up don't see even more parents, so i tend to view parenthood in dragon city as a lot freer than in our world. thus, some slightly distant parenting in this fic could be interpreted as neglectful by our standards. 
> 
> 3\. next chapter of the dragon academy fic is... chugging along. stay tuned!

 

Technically speaking, he’d never really moved into Liya’s house at all; he only ever unpacked half of his suitcase before he was packing it all up again to go to Penn Stables.

 

 

Artha and his mum, who asks him to call her Fira, walk with him until they get to Liya’s house. “You sound funny,” Artha tells him. Parmon thinks Artha sounds funnier, but doesn’t say so. “Are you from… _The North?_ ”

“I’m from Sunlight Heights,” Parmon says. “People from the Northern Hemisphere sound very different.” He’d watched a documentary on North Haven once. At the time he’d thought it would be incredible fun to go visit another city, one much bigger and older than Sunlight Heights. He’s rapidly rethinking that idea.

“Oh,” Artha says. “Is Sunlight Heights like Sun City? Can you see the sky there? I’ve never seen it before, it sounds weird.”

Parmon looks at him. “It’s… the sky,” he says, slightly helpless. He knew that a lot of people in Dragon City never even left their own layers, but he can’t imagine not having ever seen the sky. How could he describe _the sky?_ It would be like trying to describe the ocean! He really hopes Artha’s seen the ocean…

Fira’s soft laughter halts their conversation. “I’ll take you to Sun City to see the sky someday, Artha,” she says. Her voice is deep and gentle. Everything about her seems very gentle. “We’re almost at the place where the Noodle Pot used to be. Do you think you could recognise your friend’s house?”

Parmon nods. “It’s blue,” he says, “or at least, it was blue, the last time I was here.” It’s probably still blue.

They find the house. Parmon goes up to the door and knocks, while Artha and Fira stay a few metres back. Fira nods encouragingly each time Parmon looks back, which is three times before Liya finally appears.

“Oh, good, Parmon, you’re here finally,” she says, eyes sliding over him and then back into the house. “Sorry, sweetie, I’m a little busy at the moment. Come in, come in,” she says, stepping back. Parmon looks to Fira again. She gives him a thumbs up. Artha waves. Parmon waves back and goes inside.

 

* * *

 

He’d arrived on a Penday afternoon, so he has all of Donday to unpack and adjust to life at Liya’s house before he starts school on Binday. He doesn’t do either of these things.

Liya has four children. It’s a lot by Sunlight Heights standards; even more so for Dragon City, where overpopulation is a constant worry in the backs of most people’s heads. Dragon City houses, especially those in the less wealthy districts, are designed with smaller families in mind. Which is why Parmon spends his first night tossing and turning, unable to sleep on an uncomfortable air mattress as two other kids breathe noisily in their beds on either side of him.

At breakfast there’s only rice, with no fruit or berries in sight. When he wants to read, Liya insists he go and run about the streets with the other kids. Exhausted and overstimulated, he returns home to find that the only small, quiet place he can huddle in with his blanket is an uncomfortable cleaning cupboard.

By Binday, he’s still quietly dreading his first day at a new school in a new city, but at least there will be some routine, some form of familiarity to it. And none of Liya’s kids are in the same year level as he is, which will hopefully give him a break. Even walking the busy few blocks to Mid City Institution 3 is tiring with their shouting over the crowds.

But, he thinks as he watches a Bull Class dragon stomp past him, almost close enough to touch, there are some nice things about the trip.

There had been dragons in Sunlight Heights, of course, but nearly all of them were turquoise Sonic Class, and there’d barely been a racing circuit to show them off. Certainly he’d never been this close to one in his life, and—

A hard shoulder nudges him to the right, and he gapes at the agile little Energy Class dragon that had clipped him. “Sorry,” the kid riding it calls out to him, making him splutter.

“They were my age!” he says in disbelief, tugging on Liya’s oldest child’s sleeve. “Does everyone get a dragon here?” That couldn’t be right, could it?

“If we did, would we be walking?” she grumbles. Parm takes his hand back very quickly, and resolves to keep his silence from then on.

He manages for the rest of the walk, and when the other kids leave him at the front of the school without even a word of goodbye, he starts to think if maybe he shouldn’t just keep his mouth shut for the whole school year. He’d never managed to make any real friends back in Sunlight Heights, and even if this place didn’t have Rafe Leon to tease him in front of everyone else, he had a bad feeling that he’d still be seen as weird.

Maybe even weirder than at home, he thinks, remembering Artha’s questions when they’d met. If he never speaks, at least none of them can say he sounds different…

“Hey!” an awfully familiar voice says behind him, “what are you here for?”

For a second, all he can do is blink and focus on the other sounds around him. “Um,” he says, and then turns around, and yes, that’s Artha standing there. “I go to school here, now.”

Artha grins, bouncing on his toes for a second. “That’s so cool!” he says. He continues chattering and grabs Parmon’s wrist at the same time, pulling him through corridors and seemingly not noticing his increasing bewilderment. “Mom was worried about you but Dad said you’d be fine, and he said maybe we’d see you again, and I didn’t believe him but he was right! Why are you here? Is your friend nice? She seemed kinda weird when she opened the door. Not weird like you, weird like—” He pulls a face that Parm has no hope of understanding.

Luckily Artha finally seems to sense something is off. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I didn’t mean to call you weird. You’re really cool. It’s cool I get to see you again.”

Torn between low-level sensory overload and a warm feeling that might be friendship, Parmon just shakes his head. “Noisy here,” he manages.

“Oh, sorry,” Artha says, and looks at the floor. “Mom says I need to let other people talk more.”

“It’s okay, it’s nice,” Parmon replies, and weirdly, it doesn’t feel like a lie. “The school is noisy.” They must have gone through at least four different hallways now, and the crowd isn’t thinning out.

“The classrooms are quieter,” Artha offers. He shifts his grip on Parmon’s wrist like he’s securing it. “We’re almost there, too.”

He’s right – the classroom is quieter, when they walk in, the loudest voice being Artha’s as he shows off Parm to the teacher and then begs to do Parmon’s introduction to the class for him, cheering when the teacher (clearly used to him) allows it.

It’s maybe the nicest thing anyone his own age has ever done for him, Parmon thinks as he stands silently next to Artha, who gestures dramatically as he says, “This is Parm. He’s from Sunlight Heights! It’s this city that’s built in the _sky,_ right over the _ocean_ …”

 

* * *

 

Three days after they met again, Artha tells Parm to come back to his house after school.

“I have this cool new game that Dad won’t let me bring to school, and Mom said she’d let me help her make cookies if I promise not to put my hands in the flour like last time,” he says quietly. The teacher shushes him anyway, and Parm concentrates harder on his datapad. “The dragons are annoying sometimes, but they’re kinda cool.”

Parm forgets the datapad. “You have dragons?” he asks, trying to be quiet as well, but the teacher clears her throat at him anyway.

“Yeah,” Artha says, “Dad has a lot of them. The stables are bigger than the house.” He makes a weird face and Parm hides a giggle behind his datapad.

“Parmon, Artha, do I have to separate you?” the teacher asks, wagging a finger.

“Noooo,” Artha whines, and Parm giggles again. The teacher stares at them for another second before going back to his own work, and Parm ignores the rest of Artha’s whispers. He really doesn’t want them to get separated.

It’s strange, having a friend, but it’s also as nice as he’d always imagined it to be. Especially missing his mother as he does, he’s glad he has Artha with him. So after class ends, he tells Artha, “Okay.”

“What?” Artha says, busy with his locker, but a second later he lights up. “Yeah! It’ll be so fun! Mom said you can even sleep over if you want.”

“I don’t have pajamas,” Parm says, slightly helplessly. A visit is something, but staying over is another thing entirely, and he can feel himself getting anxious at the thought. Artha plunges on obliviously, which he seems to do a lot.

“You can borrow some of mine,” he says, “even though you’re shorter than me. I have really drac blue ones, but I like them a lot, so you can have my green ones.”

A lot of Parm really wants to apologise and say he can’t. He fidgets, looking down and rubbing the back of his hand with his thumb. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, and when he looks up, Artha’s eyebrows are down and he’s pouting.

The other thing he sees when he looks up is Liya’s oldest child, walking with two friends and laughing. He looks back at Artha, than the girl, whose name he doesn’t even know, then starts running, bumping into people with the awkward way he does it. “Hey!” he calls, waving until she sees him and stops laughing.

“What,” she says, and Parm is filled with a sudden conviction that he doesn’t remember feeling ever before.

“I’m going to stay at my friend’s house tonight,” he says, probably too loudly, but he doesn’t care. “If you could tell Liya, that would be, um. Nice.”

Maybe he has skewed expectations over how much resistance he’ll meet, because when she just says “Okay,” and pats his shoulder once, he flails, like he’d pushed at a door only to find it much lighter than it appeared.

Artha is still standing where Parm had left him, but he looks much happier now. “I had to make sure Liya knows where I am,” Parm says lamely.

“I heard,” Artha replies. He tugs at Parm’s wrist and says, “Come on, I wanna play the viddgame.”

It’s not so far to Artha’s house, or rather, the stables he lives at. There’s a large blue dragon out the front of the stables being rubbed down by a man with orange hair, and when the man sees Artha he holds out a hand and beckons him closer. Artha rolls his eyes.

“ _Dad_ ,” he whines, “I don’t wanna do dragon stuff today.” But he walks up to the dragon anyway. Parm holds back, wary of the towering beast.

But the dragon just lowers its head and nudges gently at Artha, snuffling a little. “You must be Parm,” Artha’s dad says, gesturing for him to join them as well. Parm gulps and steps closer. “This is Cephyiss,” he continues. “You can pat him, he’s very gentle. Oryon is a whole different story,” he jokes.

“Oryon?” Parm squeaks.

“Parm’s scared of dragons,” Artha announces. His dad chuckles.

“Don’t be mean, Artha,” he says, and then, “Come on inside, Parm. I hear you’re a fan of cookies.”

The difference between Liya’s household and Artha’s continues to warm Parm throughout the evening. It’s not calm, exactly, but it’s quieter, and less busy, which is such a nice change from the past few days that Parm almost forgets that he hasn’t been staying here forever.

Artha doesn’t put his hands in the flour when they make cookies, but Parm does.

 

* * *

 

Liya doesn’t mind that Parm has somewhere else to be apart from under her feet, so she gives him free reign to go to Artha’s house whenever he likes. After three visits, Artha’s dad asks if she doesn’t want to meet them, and Parm can only shrug – she doesn’t seem too worried either way. When he says this to Fira, she frowns and looks down at her work bench.

“Parm,” she says, “you like staying here, don’t you?” Parm nods. “And you know you can stay here whenever you like?” He nods again. She pauses, biting her lip, and then continues, “Perhaps you could keep some things here. Just in case.”

It’s confusing, but Parm nods a third time anyway. It makes sense, he supposes.

So he starts bringing things, a change of clothing or his pillow, piling them in Artha’s room next to the spare mattress that hasn’t been put away since that first night he stayed over. Everything gets brought over so quickly, seeing as he’d barely brought anything to Dragon City in the first place, and hadn’t even finished unpacking at Liya’s house – and yet, somehow, he’s still surprised when he goes to the house one day to find the only things left in his corner are his console and his favourite blanket.

He picks up the blanket, running his hands over it to feel the texture, the way he does when he’s overwhelmed. If he takes this over to Artha’s house, it will be permanent, he knows, in a way that adults are supposed to decide, not six-almost-seven year olds.

There’s no one else in the room, so he pulls the blanket around his shoulders and sits on the mattress, pulling the console over and punching in a command long memorised.

It rings for a few long moments before his mother’s face appears onscreen. She looks much the same as she had when she’d seen him off at the port in Sunlight Heights – slightly stressed, but trying to smile through it. It’s odd to think that it was only just over a fortnight ago. “Parmon,” she says, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says automatically. “I just wanted to call you.” She smiles a little more at that.

“I do miss you, but I’m glad you’re there,” she says. “And I’m glad you could stay with someone you already know.” He shifts under his blanket uncomfortably, and her eyes sharpen. “Is something wrong,” she says, in the way she does where it isn’t a question but a demand.

“I made a friend,” he says, and then, “I want to go stay at his house.”

His mother stares at him. She doesn’t know Artha at all, so he thinks it must sound like he’s been replaced with an entirely different child, one that just so happens to look and sound like Parmon Sean. “Stay… for a night?” she asks slowly.

“Stay,” he repeats. “I’ve been sleeping there a lot. His parents are nice. They own dragons. It’s crowded here, Mum,” he adds, voice going a bit wobbly at the end. His mother makes a _tch_ noise, like she does when she isn’t sure what to say.

“Let me talk to Liya,” she says eventually. Parm hunches under his blanket a bit more. “I want you to be happy, Parmon,” she says, and maybe her voice sounds a bit wobbly too.

“Okay,” he says, still wobbly as well, and he gathers his blanket around him like deflection gear. “Okay,” he repeats, and goes to find Liya.

 

* * *

 

The next time Parm arrives at Artha’s house, it isn’t much different from the first. Conner is out the front rubbing down Cephyiss’ scales, although this time Artha is play-wrestling with Beau a few feet away from them. Conner spots him first and waves. Parm waves back, blanket and console bundled under one arm.

“Just in time for lunch,” Conner says warmly. Beau spots him next and bounds over, nosing at his blanket, and only stops when Artha drags his head away.

“Mom said you’re staying forever now,” he says, so excited he’s nearly vibrating. “You’re still staying in my room, right? This is so cool!” Next to him, Beau huffs and shakes his head, flopping about his newly grown sail-spines. Tentatively, Parm reaches out and pats him as Artha continues, “I got all my old toys out ‘cause you don’t have _any_ so I want you to choose one that’ll be yours forever, okay?”

“After lunch,” Conner says, shooing Cephyiss back to the stables. “Your mom cooked something nice for Parm’s first Donday with us, so we better not miss it.”

“Yeah!” Artha agrees, grabbing Parm’s wrist and gently pulling him towards the house.

“Yeah,” Parm says softly, but when he steps through the door and smells fresh fruit juice, he smiles. It really does feel like coming home.


End file.
